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Some Comments on “Literary Theory”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Charles E. Whitmore
Charles E. Whitmore*
Affiliation:
Hingkam Center, Massachusetts
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Extract

In various papers published during the past twelve years I have discussed certain aspects and applications of what I call “literary theory.” This piecemeal method of publication inevitably leaves loose ends; and my purpose on the present occasion is to tie up some of them by further discussion of sundry points and by the citing of sundry passages which further illuminate them. Without promising any startling novelties, I hope to be able to straighten out a few matters over which uncertainty or controversy might possibly arise.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 1930 , pp. 578 - 597
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1930

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References

1 “A Definition of the Lyric,” PMLA XXXIII (1918), 584-600 (cited as Lyric); “The Validity of Literary Definitions,” ibid., XXXIX (1924), 722-736 (cited as Definitions); “The Domain of Literary Theory,” JEGP XXV (1926), 34-53 (cited as Domain); “The Approaches to Literary Theory,” in Fred Newton Scott Anniversary Papers, Chicago, 1929 (cited as Approaches).

2 Selections from Pater (1901), p. 220; note 3, 7.

3 The parallel is pointed out and discussed by M. Ramon Fernandez in the Nouvelle Revue Française for August, 1928, 272-4.

4 “Le Centenaire de Taine.” in Revue de Paris for April 15, 1928, p. 763.

5 For my interpretation of it, see Domain, pp. 43-47.

6 The Principles of Reasoning (1924), p. 59.

7 A Course in Philosophy (1924), p. 383.

8 Some Suggestions in Ethics (1918), pp. 47-52.

9 Cf. James Ward, Psychological Principles (1919), p. 99.

10 See “Kinetic and Potential Speech,” first printed in 1911, and reprinted in Portraits and Speculations, 1913.

11 Thomson and Geddes, Evolution (Home University Library), p. 231. Cf. also E. S. Russell, The Study of Living Things (1924).

12 La Vie de Maurice Barrès, p. 246.

13 Le Liseur de Romans, p. 164.

14 “Prose literature could only arise when, as civilization advanced, man's minds grew more reflective, and writers wished to express collected facts and deductions drawn from such facts or speculations based upon them. This stage was reached in Greece in the sixth century B.C.”—H. N. Fowler, A History of Ancient Greek Literature (1903), p. 148.

15 Divagations, p. 250.

16 Two “leaders” in the London Times Literary Supplement (“Questions of Prose,” September 13, 1928, and “Pure Poetry,” October 25, 1928) offer interesting sidelights on these matters.

17 Lyric, p. 592; Domain, p. 48.

18 February 9, 1928, p. 93.

19 Journal of Philosophy, XXIII (1926), 685.

20 Philosophical Review, XXVI (1917), 11.

21 I have essayed it in a paper entitled “The Autonomy of Æsthetics” in the Monist, XXXVII (1927), 238-255.